Encyclopedia of

Cannibalism

Cannibalism, or anthropophagy, is the ingestion of human flesh by humans.
The idea of people eating parts of other people is something that has
occurred wherever and whenever humans have formed societies. In
traditional accounts cannibalism has emerged from peoples' history
and cosmology, embedded in their myths and folklore. In all of these
contexts, anthropophagy connotes moral turpitude.

The concept of cannibalism, its ethical encumbrances, and its cultural
expression in history and myth are unquestionably universal. To be human
is to think about the possibility of cannibalism. Anthropophagy is
hard-wired into the architecture of human imagination. Cannibal giants,
ogres, bogies, goblins, and other "frightening figures"
populate the oral and literate traditions of most cultures, summoning
images of grotesqueness, amorality, lawlessness, physical deformity, and
exaggerated size. The Homeric tradition of the Greek Cyclops, the
Scandinavian and Germanic folklore giants, or the Basque Tartaro find
parallels in Asia, Africa, India, and Melanesia. In a fusion of the
historical and the fabled, these pancultural incidences of cannibal
indicate a remarkable similarity in the way meanings are assigned to
cannibalism across the world.

Constructing History with Cannibals

Many cultural mythologies posit a prehistory that antedates the onset of
acceptable mores, an epoch closed off from the beginnings of human
settlement and social organization, when cannibalistic dynasties of giants
prevailed. This common motif in cultural history indicates that
cannibalism often symbolizes "others" that are less than
fully human in some way. The imputation of anthropophagy draws a boundary
between "us" and "them," the civilized and
uncivilized, in a manner that depicts humans as emerging from a chaotic
and bestial epoch dominated by a race of human-eating giants. These images
of cannibal predecessors constitute a story that people tell themselves
through myth to explain their past and present circumstances. So
conventional are these patterns of thought across time and culture that we
have come to understand cannibalism as the quintessential symbol of
alterity, an entrenched metaphor of cultural xenophobia.

Constructing Fiction with Cannibals

These themes of primordial anthropophagy serve other functions as well.
Most oral traditions contain such folktales and fables that are passed
down through the generations. One thinks here of the Western stories such
as "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Hansel and
Gretel," and early versions of "Little Red Riding
Hood." These are not just dormant figures inhabiting the fairytale
world, they convey for caretakers a vision of control and are frequently
used—like the Western bogeyman or little green monster—to
coerce, frighten, and cajole children into obedience. The threat of
cannibalization provides an externalized and uncontrollable projection of
parenthood capable of punishing misdeeds. In this sense, cannibal figures
share certain characteristics with imaginary companions and fictions such
as the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus, which, by contrast,
project positive reward rather than negative punishment.

Cannibal representations are part of the universal stock of imaginative
creations that foster
obedience and conformity. Psychologists thus argue that anthropophagy is
an archetype unaffected by cultural relativism and is, perhaps, a
reflection of childhood psychodynamic processes. Flesh eating, from this
perspective, may reflect child-engendered projections of parenthood and
innate destruction fantasies.

Parallels between Western and non-Western fictional mediums illuminate the
power cannibalism exerts on the human psyche. The commercial success of
films such as
Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter,
and
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover,
along with the extensive media coverage of cannibalistic criminals such
as Jeffrey Dahmer, Gary Heidnik, and Albert Fish, speaks volumes about the
public's fascination with cannibalism. Moviegoers'
sympathetic cheering for Hannibal Lecter is a way of suspending disbelief,
of inverting societal norms in the sanctuary of a movie theater. An
alternative reality of moral turpitude is assumed as escapism, as if the
audience is saying, "Do your best to scare me because I know it
isn't really true." As a metaphor for abandonment,
cannibalism scandalizes, titillates, and spellbinds.

In the context of folklore, cannibalism allows a rich re-imagining of the
boundaries between the human and nonhuman, civilized and barbarian, male
and female, the utopian and real. As such anthropophagy promotes not only
social control but also teaches lessons about history, morality, and
identity.

Cannibalism emerges in these discourses of imaginative literature and
sacred history as an "otherworldly" phenomenon that is
unfavorable to human survival and thus likely to command fear and
respect—hence the prevalence of cannibalistic motifs in nursery
rhymes. These profound pancultural similarities have led some analysts to
argue that the term "cannibalism" should be reserved only
for the fantasy, both European and native, of the flesh-eating
"other" rather than the practice of flesh-eating.

Constructing the Practice of Cannibalism

As soon as one starts to consider questions about which peoples have eaten
human flesh, one finds controversy. The main issues are the colonial
history of attributions of flesh-eating as a political form of domination;
the problem of what is acceptable evidence in the context of scientific
knowledge of the day; and the problems of interpreting oral,
archaeological, and written evidence.

Although there is no accepted consensus on the various types of
cannibalism encountered by researchers, the literature differentiates
generally among a few types.

Survival cannibalism.
This well-documented variant involves consumption of human flesh in
emergency situations such as starvation. Some of the most famous cases are
the 1846 Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada and the South American athletes
stranded in the Andes in 1972, whose plight later became the subject of
the film
Alive
(1993).

Endocannibalism.
Endocannibalism is the consumption of human flesh from a member of
one's own social group. The rationale for such behavior is usually
that in consuming parts of the body, the person ingests the
characteristics of the deceased; or through consumption there is a
regeneration of life after death.

Exocannibalism.
Exocannibalism is the consumption of flesh outside one's close
social group—for example, eating one's enemy. It is usually
associated with the perpetration of ultimate violence or again as a means
of imbibing valued qualities of the victim. Reports of this practice
suggest a high incidence of exocannibalism with headhunting and the
display of skulls as war trophies. The majority of the controversies about
the practice of cannibalism refer to endocannibalism and/or
exocannibalism.

Evidence in the Twenty-First Century

In the popular Western imagination, knowledge and understanding of
cannibals were shaped by early explorers, missionaries, colonial officers,
travelers, and others. The most commonly cited accounts are those about
the South American Tupinamba Indians; the Caribbean Cariba (the word
cannibal
comes from, and is a corruption of,
carrib
and
Caliban
)of St. Vincent, St. Croix, and Martinique; and the South American Aztecs.
These accounts were followed by numerous reported incidences of
cannibalism in Africa, Polynesia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. These
often dubious attributions of cannibalism were a form of
"othering"—denigrating other people and marking

Similar to many tribes in Papua New Guinea, this group of Iwan
warriors were once cannibals. While the tyranny of time often
hampers these interpretive processes, the very act of attributing
cannibalism to a society is now seen as a controversial political
statement given modern sensitivities to indigenous peoples and
cultures.

CHARLES AND JOSETTE LENARS/CORBIS

a boundary between the good "us" and the bad
"them." The "primitive savage" was thus
constructed as beyond the pale of civilization. As Alan Rumsey has noted,
"Cannibalism has been most fully explored in its Western
manifestations, as an aspect of the legitimating ideology of colonialism,
missionization, and other forms of cultural imperialism" (1999, p.
105). Books that charted the travels of early explorers during the 1800s
and early 1900s invariably carry titles with the term
cannibal.

How reliable are these early accounts, and what kinds of evidence for
cannibal practices do they contain or rely upon? One of the most famous
commentators and critics, has concluded, "I have been unable to
uncover adequate documentation of cannibalism as a custom in any form for
any society. . . . The idea of the 'other' as cannibals,
rather than the act, is the universal phenomenon" (Arens 1979, p.
139).

Many historical texts are compromised by Western prejudices, so that
cannibalism emerges more as colonial myth and cultural myopia than as
scientifically attested truth. The accounts do not stand the test of
modern scholarly scrutiny. Most anthropologists, however, tend to reject
the argument that unless one has photographic or firsthand evidence for a
practice, one cannot infer its existence at some period. Anthropologists
and archaeologists rely on a host of contextual clues, regional patterns,
and material-culture evidence when drawing conclusions about past social
practices. What the anthropologist gains by way of notoriety may be lost
by heated dispute with ethnic descendants who find the attribution of past
cannibalism demeaning because of the connotations of barbarism.

The Main Disputes

Among the principal academic disputes about evidence for cannibalistic
practices, two in particular stand out. First, archaeologist Tim White has
conducted an analysis of 800-year-old skeletal bone
fragments from an Anasazi site at Mancos in southwest Colorado. William
Arens has responded that White was seduced by the Holy Grail of
cannibalism and failed to consider other explanations for the kind of
perimortal bone trauma he encountered.

Second, Daniel Gajdusek found a fatal nervous disease known as
kuru
among a small population of the Fore people in Papua New Guinea. The
disease is related to Creutzfeldt-Jacob, bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), and Gertmann-Stausler-Scheinker syndrome. Working with
anthropologists, Gajdusek claimed the disease was caught through the
mortuary practice of eating the brains from dead people in Fore. Arens
questioned the photographic evidence provided by Gadjusek and others. He
suggested other forms of transmission by which the disease may have been
contracted. The result is clashing scholarly perspectives on the
historical occurrence of cannibalism.

Social Explanations and Conditions for Cannibalism

The cross-cultural evidence for cannibalism among societies in Papua New
Guinea, such as the Gimi, Hua, Daribi, and Bimin-Kuskusmin, suggests it is
linked to the expression of cultural values about life, reproduction, and
regeneration. Flesh is consumed as a form of life-generating food and as a
symbolic means of reaffirming the meaning of existence. In other areas of
Papua New Guinea, the same cultural themes are expressed through pig kills
and exchanges. Cannibalism was a means of providing enduring continuity to
group identity and of establishing the boundaries of the moral community.
But it was equally a form of violence meted out to victims deemed amoral
or evil, such as witches who brought death to other people.

A second line of research has suggested that this latter exocannibalism is
an expression of hostility, violence, or domination toward a victim. In
this interpretation, the perpetrator eats to inflict an ultimate indignity
and thus an ultimate form of humiliation and domination. The archaeologist
John Kantner, reviewing the evidence for reputed Anasazi cannibalism in
the American Southwest, has concluded that with the gradual reduction in
available resources and intensified competition, exocannibalism became a
sociopolitical measure aimed at enforcing tribal inequities. However the
evidence remains hotly disputed. Skeletal trauma is indexed by bone
markings made by tools or scrapers, disarticulations, breakage patterns,
and "pot polish," blackened bone fragments suggesting
abrasions caused by the boiling of bones. Such data indicate intentional
and targeted defleshing of bones for the extraction of marrow. Such bone
markings are quite different from mortuary bones found elsewhere in the
region. Controversy surrounds these findings because other causes for the
same bone markings have been proffered, including, second reburial of
remains and external interference with bones by animals and natural
hazards. Other scholars are therefore reluctant to impute cannibalism in
the absence of any direct observation of it.

Other analysts, looking at the famous Aztec materials, have suggested that
such large-scale cannibalism is related both to hunger and the
appreciation of the nutritional value of flesh. In other words,
cannibalism is a response to material conditions of existence such as
protein depreciation and dwindling livestock. In Mesoamerica these
predisposing conditions ensure that cannibalism is given a ritual
rationale so that themes of renewal are manifested through flesh-eating.
The evidence of perimortem mutilation is overwhelming; the inference from
these data to cannibalism and its rationales remains, however, contestable
and less compelling.

Conclusion

From the available evidence, scholars have gleaned a seemingly reliable
historical account of how cultures have constructed and used their
concepts of cannibalism to provide a stereotype of the
"other." Whatever technological advancements might yield in
the way of more refined analysis of skeletal materials, proving that
culture "X" or "Y" conducted cannibalism may
not be quite the defining moment in human self-definition that some have
thought it to be. The key insight is that in pancultural discourse and
imaginative commerce, the human consumption of human flesh has served as a
social narrative to enforce social control. Moreover, attributions of
cannibalism remain a potent political tool wielded by those who pursue
agendas of racial and ethnic domination.

The French philosopher Michel Montaigne long ago disabused society of the
Western-centered notion that eating human flesh is somehow
barbaric and exotic: "I consider it more barbarous to eat a man
alive than eat him dead" (1958, p. 108). How one interprets
cannibalism is thus always circumscribed and inflected by a culturally
shaped morality.

For many researchers, then, the issue of whether cannibalism was ever a
socially sanctioned practice is of secondary importance. Developments in
experts' understanding of archaeological remains include the
etiology and transmission of diseases like BSE, and interpretation of oral
accounts and regional patterns that will likely point to some forms of
cannibalism in some past cultures, even if such findings are tempered by
contemporary cultural imperatives to avoid the appearance of
stigmatization of the "other."

Sahagón, Bernardino de.
Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain,
13 vols., translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur O. Anderson. Santa
Fe, NM: The School of American Research, 1950–1982.